Auc­tion up­date

Clas­sic Amer­i­can mus­cle dom­i­nated Shan­nons’ lat­est Mel­bourne auc­tion, with a va­ri­ety of im­ported per­for­mance ve­hi­cles from the early 1930s to the late 1970s all sell­ing well, some way above their es­ti­mates.

But what we were in­ter­ested in was the lo­cal prod­uct, in par­tic­u­lar a Holden HT Monaro GTS 350 ‘Bathurst Spe­cial’ in Day­tona Bronze.

Es­ti­mates were in the $75,000 to $90,000 range and the win­ning bid of $84,000 was an im­pres­sive re­sult in re­cent times.

Shan­nons’ es­ti­mate is that some 700 GTS 350s were made, but very few re­main. This one is be­lieved to have a rac­ing his­tory. Ac­cord­ing to the ven­dor, it was mod­i­fied by Harry Firth for an in­de­pen­dent race team, pos­si­bly in New Zealand.

It was later trans­formed into a street ma­chine by an­other owner, who in­stalled a stroked 400-cid V8 and a Turbo 400 au­to­matic trans­mis­sion.

Then, when it was iden­ti­fied as a high­ly­de­sir­able ‘81837’ body code it was re­stored back to more au­then­tic con­fig­u­ra­tion and re­painted in its orig­i­nal colours. A set of pe­riod 14” Torque Thrust al­loy wheels was also sourced.

It’s been a while since a Monaro has sold for this price at auc­tion. It makes you won­der if GM’s de­ci­sion to stop lo­cal man­u­fac­ture has en­cour­aged col­lec­tors to pick up sig­nif­i­cant pieces of Holden his­tory.

Lot 24 was also of in­ter­est to Aus­tralian mus­cle fans.This red 1970 model Bol­well Na­gari., fit­ted with the 302 Cleve­land and 4-speed man­ual, was one of only 127 coupes made and the only one built in LHD. It was or­dered by a cus­tomer in Cal­i­for­nia but never ex­ported. The Bol­well broth­ers then used it as a demon­stra­tor.

It was dis­played at the 1973 Mel­bourne Mo­tor Show, then raced by Chris Clear­i­han and sev­eral oth­ers over the next few decades. Even­tu­ally it was con­verted to RHD and used as a road car. It sold for $55,000. A pos­si­ble bar­gain was the Fal­con XW Fair­mont V8 which went for $15,500, well above es­ti­mates of $8,000 to $12,000.

Stand­ing out among the Amer­i­cana was the out­ra­geous eight-wheel 1977 Cadil­lac El­do­rado Biar­ritz Coupe fit­ted with a cen­tral spa bath and a slide-out un­der-bon­net gas BBQ.

This Aus­tralian-cus­tomised Caddy mea­sures 7.3 me­tres in length, weighs around 2.5 tonnes and is pow­ered by an 8.2-litre V8 en­gine with six ex­haust pipes.

It was sold to an over­seas phone bid­der for a mod­est $39,000.

Just about ev­ery­thing fit­ted with a V8 was sold. $177,500 was paid for a 1968 Shelby Mus­tang GT 350 Con­vert­ible, one of only 404 made in that year. A 1966 Shelby ‘Hertz Replica’ brought $41,500, just $500 more than an ‘SS Trib­ute’ 1969 Chevro­let Ca­maro con­vert­ible.

While an early cus­tomised 1934 Ford ‘Hot Rod’ fit­ted with Holden V8 run­ning gear reached $44,000 at the fall of the ham­mer.

Shan­nons Syd­ney Au­tumn Clas­sic Auc­tion, March 3

Twenty- three num­ber­plates – and the right to dis­play them – dom­i­nated pro­ceed­ings at Shan­nons’ Syd­ney sale on the first Mon­day in March. Twenty of the plates were re­leased for sale by NSW Roads and Mar­itime Ser­vices and, as usual, the re­sults were as­ton­ish­ing.

$97,000 was paid for NSW 233, while NSW 266, 290 and 235 also fetched around the $95,000 mark.

As it turned out, those prices were only just topped by the best-sell­ing mus­cle car. A VH Valiant Charger E38 with the Big Tank op­tion sold for $98,000, a very good re­sult for these in­creas­ingly pop­u­lar cars. That’s $14,000 more than the GTS 350 Monaro fetched at the Mel­bourne sale.

The other good re­sult was $34,000 paid for an LC Holden To­rana GTR, a sur­prise for a To­rana with­out the XU-1 op­tion.

An LH To­rana SL/R 5000 – clearly iden­ti­fied as a replica – only just topped it, sell­ing for $40,000.